West Leadership Weekly Round Up: February 26th - March 2nd

Hi all!

We had a busy and productive week over here at WLA! 

Monday was spent matching our new students from the start of the spring semester with their mentees and group members. Students completed the speed matching activity by interviewing every possible mentor and mentee and identifying their top selections. This process went even smoother than the first semester and students really enjoyed asking each other questions and getting to know one another. 

Tuesday we spent the class getting our grade trackers completed as well as completing some surveys regarding social and emotional learning. From there we had students sign up for the Raise Me scholarship which allows them to start collecting money for college as soon as their freshman year. Several middle school students also looked into possible scholarships and programs that were provided to us by YESS' College Navigator, Emily. 

Wednesday and Thursday were lesson days as the class finished their discussions and activities on both accountability and peaceful conflict resolution. We were able to review various scenarios and examples of what accountability looks like as well as discuss how we can become more accountable with others. From there the class spent time on violent versus peaceful conflict resolutions. Students were shown a few videos explaining why people chose violence over peace when handling conflict and then we spent some time going over peaceful resolution strategies and applications. Students were really interested in the conversations regarding gender and conflict and also remembered a lot from our brain unit regarding why our emotions can hijack our reason and logic. 

Friday the class finished up our conversations on conflict resolution and accountability by completing another journal entry for the week and discussing it. From there we spent some time as a community and did our Fishbowl Friday activity which was pretty fun. The questions continue to vary depending on current events and the topics we are learning about at the time. 

Next week we will be moving onto our lessons over forgiveness and self-care. We will also be introducing our Unit 2 stand up project that should be quite a bit of fun to work on in the coming weeks! See you then! -Ben